Ethiopian Review

By Alain Lallemand, lemonde
(Translated from the French)

No less than 80 percent of weapons and munitions sold today in the Somali black markets are transported by commanders of the Ethiopian Woyanne Army and the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), although the chiefs of staff of the former are interested in ceasing the traffic. The gun-running represents millions of dollars. More surrealist yet: while they purport to be there to stabilize the sub-continent, the Ugandan commanders of AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) engage with abandon in the small but lucrative suicidal business; instead of destroying them, they resell arms seized during raids against the Islamist militia known as Shabaab in the clandestine market. One recent transaction alone has fetched 20,000 dollars.

When the UN Security Council has taken note of the latest report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia, Le Soir has received leaks of some of those disclosures in the report to New York. One of the most disquieting elements in that report is the extent of compromise of principle that Ethiopian Woyanne forces have gone to; the level and volume of arms trafficking implies very high level involvement of the high command in the Ethiopian capital. In the first instance, Ethiopian Woyanne commanders sold –- instead of destroying -– weapons seized from their enemies: the Shabaab militia, the ex-Islamic Courts and the Classic National Resistance (“Muqawama”). Then, they sold weapons from their own arms arsenals (warehouses) to the bafflement of the general headquarters in Addis Ababa who did not understand where the large quantities of weapons and munitions had disappeared to. Lately, the situation has further deteriorated: containers laden with weapons and munitions have been spirited away from the arms depots of the regular army in Addis Ababa to be resold directly on the Somali back markets.

Such a level of massive interception of Ethiopian arms is not possible without complicity hatched within the armed forces high command, although the Ethiopian Woyanne Minister of Defense has not apparently been implicated.

And then officers of the regular Somali troops are not immune either. Arms belonging to their troops fallen on the battle field find their ways into the black markets within hours of skirmishes. The chief of national security of the transitional federal government himself is said to be one of the three big arms dealers in the black market.

This arms bazaar has taken such a looming twist in the last six months that it has developed not one but seven markets — six in Mogadishu and one in Afgoi. From the latter location, weapons find their way to neighboring Kenya for the purpose of not only cattle herding, but also to feed the growing insurrection there. Weapons so traded include AK 47 assault rifles, RPGs (rocket propelled grenades), PKMs (heavy Kalashnikovs mounted on tripods).

The collusion of these regular armed forces (Ethiopian Woyanne, Somali and AMISOM) in these criminal activities explains why arms circulating in Somalia have become more and more sophisticated. However, other forces are at work too. Eritrea continues to be the principal platform of arms supply to the Shabaab militia, and through them, to the ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Front) of Ethiopia. This is why SA-7 and SA-18 surface-to-air missiles have been captured. One of these weapons bearing a Russian serial number has been acknowledged by Moscow to have been sold to Eritrea in 1995. At least one French Milan missile has equally been captured and Paris has confirmed without much ado that it had sold it to “a [Persian] Gulf nation”. The high point of this sophistication was attained when Shabaab fired an American TOW missile on Somali troops two weeks ago. It goes without saying that every time one of these missiles is fired in Somalia, there is behind it an insurgent who has inevitably been trained in operating it by a foreign army.

According to one of the UN regional specialists in the matter, the connections among the Somali, Iraqi and Afghan conflicts have become even more disturbingly close with the combatants moving from one theatre of operation to the other. Palestinian fighters continue to support Shabaab militants, as do the Yemenis and Sudanese — or even native Americans and Britons. In this context, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia reaffirms its accusations contained in a previous report which implicates Iran and Hezbollah. Just like in south-east Iraq at the beginning of 2006, Somalia has become the scene of sophisticated explosives with the uncanny mark of Iran developing on its territory: the device is more and more compact; its fire is GSM remote-controlled; it is equipped with a homing device that can slam into armor plating of heavy duty equipment that was used with devastating effects in Iraq and, a few months later, in Afghanistan.